Archview #62: Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D

 The ultimate cashgrab?

 Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is based on the Mercenaries minigame that can be found on REvil 4 and 5. Actually, it's not "based off", it's more of a remix of said unlockables. In the Mercenaries, any and all survival horror elements are forgone, Mercenaries is an action game through and through.
 First of all, there's no story nor anything, this is as arcadey as it gets. The initial missions are more of a tutorial than anything, but as soon as you get to the third "chapter", the real game starts. You must pick from one of eight characters, each one with his own unique weapon load out, and try to survive as long as possible while scoring the highest amount of points possible. Each stage has a couple of healing items, time extenders and items that grant you points as you score combo kills, ammo for your weapons is randomly dropped from enemies.

 The game plays like most modern Resident Evil games, with an over-the-shoulder point of view. Hitting the enemies on certain spots(Arms, head, knees) let's you score free, and powerful, melee blows. Melee blows have a lot of advantages, invulnerability, extra time on kill and most of them hit a wide area, plus, you conserve ammo, so using and abusing them quickly becomes the name of the game. Time is limited, so finding every time extender becomes a must, as scoring kills in quick succession as it grants bonus points. The whole point of the game is obtaining the highest amount of points possible.

 The controls work well for the most part. The touchscreen is only used to change your weapons(If you don't fancy the digital pad), but it's also used to look around your surroundings. Honestly, looking around with the touchpad doesn't work too well, so you'd better get used to the over the shoulder camera. A new feature to the resident evil games, is moving while shooting, which is done by holding L and R at the same time. It's not too handy, but it's there, just keep in mind the aim is locked.

 There are lots of unlockables, from costumes, to skills. Yes, skills, there are dozens of them, and you can equip three of them at a time. They offer passive abilities, from better healing to higher critical chances. Beating all 5 chapters unlocks the EX missions, which are way harder than the rest of the game, usually having to deal with two or more monsters with instakill attacks at the same time. Still, unless you like beating your own high scores and what not, the game won't last you that long. Disappointingly so, every stage comes from Resident Evil 4 or 5 mercenaries mode, there's not a single new stage. Also, there are no new monsters. Time extenders and Combo items are in the same places as it's console counterpart. However, stages do have different monster set ups, usually a mix of REvil 4's Ganados and REvil 5's Manjini. The only new thing found in this game is Clair Redfield, who has been missing since Code Veronica.
 Graphically, it looks fantastic, with the added bonus that even with the 3D at it's max it still looks great. The music is all recycled from the console games, and so are the sound effects. As a whole? The music is nothing special, but it fits. Besides the voice overs before each mission, there is no voice acting, at all. My biggest issue with the presentation are the menus, they are very cumbersome. For example, in order to set up skills, you have to go back to the character select screen. Picking missions are also a different screen all together, with the big "Start Mission" button being on the default menu screen. A lot of times I found myself re-starting the mission I had played, having to wait for it to load, just to get back to the menu and then go to the stage select menu, then back to the default menu to start it, pretty annoying.

 Back when it was released, one of it's selling points was the REvil: Revelation demo... and it only lasts 3-5 minutes at most, it feels pretty pointless. I also ran across a bug were an enemy would go through a wall. He got out of it by himself, but it was still bothersome. There's also an online multiplayer mode, but I didn't get to try it.
 Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D is a game made out of a minigame, and that should tell you all you need to know. It's functional, but a time waster at most, and it doesn't help knowing that every asset but Claire is recycled. Skills are a nice addition, but hardly make it the definitive version of any mercenaries minigame.
 5 out of 10.